War & Peace Quote by Neal Boortz

Boortz isn’t arguing about policy details; he’s issuing a loyalty test for a certain brand of American freedom. The line is built like a trap: if you back the war on drugs “in its present form,” you don’t just hold a different view on crime and punishment - you’re performing freedom (“lip-service”) while failing to understand it. That’s a classic talk-radio move: shift the debate from outcomes to identity, from legislation to moral credibility.

The phrase “present form” matters. It nods to the long catalogue of drug-war realities without itemizing them: militarized policing, asset forfeiture, sentencing disparities, surveillance, and the quiet normalization of state power inside everyday life. By keeping it broad, Boortz invites listeners to fill in the indictment with whatever abuses most offend them, making the argument feel personal and obvious.

His real target is the cultural bargain Americans repeatedly strike: we tolerate coercion if it’s aimed at the “wrong” people and packaged as safety. “Sovereign individual human being” is libertarian scripture, but it’s also a rhetorical escalation. Sovereignty is a term usually reserved for states; attaching it to a person reframes drug use from vice to jurisdiction. Your body becomes your territory, and the government becomes an occupying force.

Contextually, Boortz was speaking from an era when drug prohibition had become less a temporary campaign than a permanent bureaucracy. The subtext is that freedom can’t be selectively applied; once you accept paternalism here, you’ve conceded the principle everywhere.